IDN + Transforms + VS Code + Snippets = Lightning Speed #IDN101

Hiya Folks

Happy New Year!!!  

I have written a few posts before on how to write nested transforms and about a few new transform types available. But it still look like a tedious task when writing a transform – especially a complex one. It is as powerful as its confusing sometimes. I still don’t have full grip on the capabilities or the possibilities I can achieve without the need of rules. 

I love VS Code and especially its features and plugins. I use it extensively and also advocate the same to all my colleagues and clients for doing JSON and CSV files with IDN (and java coding obviously).

Few years ago one of my good mate Thomas Bui had shown me an interesting way to not need to remember syntax of each transforms while writing it. So credits to him.

Here I have built a package and hopefully show you how to deploy it in VS code and using the Snippet feature quickly write transforms with less errors.

It’s pretty simple. View the video I have made in VS Code (Works on Windows / Mac) . Please click on the gif to enlarge it. The embedded one is not rendering properly for some reason.

You will see how quickly I wrote a firstValid transform and replaced few lines with accountAttributes transforms (nested) and created a “Get New Dept” Transforms in couple of sec.

Steps are as below

1. Open “Configure User Snippets” in VS Code Preferences
2. Click on “New Global Snippets File”
3. Call it say “transforms”
4. In the file opened, replace the entire content with below code snippet
5. Save and close the file 
6. Now start typing the name of the transform (e.g. firstValid) and it will show up.
7. Press Enter and it will show you the code

That’s it

Hopefully this was helpful and makes it easy for you to write transforms for IDN. Feel free to expand the snippet by adding your own shortcuts of complex transforms or code which you use often and feel free to share it below or the article

Cheers!!!